On our 5th day we spent the morning packing up and getting our stuff in the car. Once we were all checked out we walked out the back door of our hotel and walked next door to the J.W. Marriott. Chris and I had been there a couple of days earlier to check out their pool area. I had read online that it was impressive and the reports were correct. Awesome awesome pool. It's like four pools that are all connected and you can swim under foot bridges. It has an infinity pool that you can hang out at and it overlooks the caribbean. Gorgeous view and tons of fun. We swam there for about an hour and then got out to go meet Carmen and Abel in a town a little bit to the south of us before heading to Merida.
On our way out of town Ross got motioned to pull over by one of the police at a checkpoint. We couldn't figure out why he had gotten pulled over. He spoke with him for a good 10 minutes and then let him go. He apparently had been speeding. Ridiculous since we were all going with the flow of traffic. I am certain that the cop saw that it was a rental car and pulled him over to intimidate him. Fortunately Ross has excellent Spanish skills and had his Mexican wife in the car with him and was able to talk him out of the 2000 peso ticket. Yikes, that was our first of 2 encounters with Mexican police.
By the time this was over we had heard from Carmen and Abel that we should just go ahead and meet them at a quesadilla stand in downtown Cancun and then we would go to Merida from there. When we arrived at the location we could not find Heidi's bag that had her camera and all her money in it. We realized that Heidi had asked her dad to put it in the trunk, he said okay, and then Heidi sat it down next to the car. Well, it didn't make it in the car. We sat at the quesadilla place while chris drove back to hopefully find heidi's purse. He was able to get it from the hotel front desk thankfully and all was well. That was a definite blessing and prayers were answered that day. Each of our girls had to take their own spending money. Heidi hadn't spent any at that point so all of her money was in there, $100. She was very relieved to get it back.
The trip to Merida went smoothly. There are two roads that you can take from Cancun to Merida. The cuoto (toll road) or the non-toll road. It costs 400 pesos or $35 to take the cuoto but it is well worth it. It takes 3 hours to take versus 6 hours on the non-toll road.
When we arrived in Merida all three cars pulled over to get filled up on gas and when we were done we had our second encounter with the Mexican police. We were sitting at the gas pump getting ready to leave. Chris was out of the car paying for the gas and I was in the driver seat. All of a sudden a policeman pulls up in front of me, blocking us and he is talking into his radio and staring at our front license plate. He then pulls forward to the exit of the gas station and just sits there. Chris gets in the car and we are the last of the three cars in our group to exit out of the gas station. As soon as I pull out this cop pulls out right behind me. His lights are on but in Mexico that doesn't mean anything because they all drive around with their lights on. It's like an intimidation thing or something, not sure. So he follows us for awhile and then pulls to the left of me and I can feel him staring at me. I just kept looking straight ahead, acting calm (i wasn't) and following the rest of our group. He eventually turned around and went back the other way leaving us alone. From this point on during our trip Chris and I were both a little paranoid of the Mexican Police.
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